How Wicked’s Reported Part 1 Runtime Compares to the Broadway Musical

Wicked has become one of the most anticipated movies of 2024, and the film’s runtime has reportedly been revealed, so fans should get ready to get comfortable. Wicked is an adaptation of the popular stage musical based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by author Gregory Maguire, which reimagined the characters from L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This year’s Wicked release is also just the first half of the story, with the second part set for November 2025.

Fandango has seemingly revealed Wicked‘s runtime as 2 hours and 40 minutes. While this is normal for a musical adaptation of a Broadway musical, as 2012’s Les Miserable ran 2 hours and 38 minutes and recently The Color Purple ran for 2 hours and 20 minutes, those were both full adaptations of the stage plays. Wicked on Broadway typically has a runtime of 2 hours and 35 minutes, meaning the movie adaptation that only adapts the first half of the story is longer than the full Broadway musical.

Wicked Could Be Adding More Story from the Novel

While some might scoff at Wicked‘s runtime, being longer than the stage show but only half of the story, it is worth noting that Broadway musical did have to omit many elements from the 1995 book. Wicked is likely looking to bring more elements of the story to the screen that the musical show on the stage never could. More runtime in Wicked will also likely help develop the friendship between Elphaba (Cynthia Ervino) and Galinda (Ariana Grande) before they become The Wicked Witch and The Good Witch of the North.

Splitting a famous story into two parts is nothing new, as it allows a filmmaker to cover more ground than having to condense or cut a large portion of the material, but it also has the downside of making a movie feel less complete and more like half of a story. The best example is Dune, which split the book into two parts. While both entries were highly praised and profitable at the box office, some criticized Dune- Part One for being nearly three hours of setup. Dune and Wicked have a lot in common as the first editions of their books have nearly the same page count, with Wicked being 406 pages and Dune‘s being 412 pages. There certainly is no shortage of material from the world of Oz for Wicked to draw on, but the question remains if this will enhance the story or make it more bloated than just adapting the musical as one three-hour picture.